January 27, 2010 08:40 PM UTC

The Biggest Threat to the Middle Class

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• by: Vincent Lynn

As we all get ready to hear President Obama eloquently lay out what problems the middle class faces and his roadmap to fix those problems in the SOTU, I thought it was a good time to point out the fundamental cause of the problem that no one seems to be addressing.  

High Taxes?  No.  Rush Limbaugh?  Nope.  Rising health care costs?  Not even close.  Terrorism?  C’mon, be serious.  Ok, so what is it?  Fox News.  Seriously.

Ok, this may sound ridiculous at first but hear me out.  Fox News is the leader in cable news and cable tv ratings…by a long shot Cable Ratings 1/25.  Fox has more viewers than CNN, HLN, and MSNBC combined.  Why is this a threat to the middle class?  Fox continually lacks journalistic standards like reporting the truth, researching stories, and with almost every story they contradict their slogan of “We report. You decide.”  For those on the left, I’m preaching to the choir.  For those on the right, you think I’m drunk on liberal Kool-aid.  For those in the apathetic majority, you aren’t reading this because it’s on a political blog and you are (a)pathetic.  However, this apathetic majority also makes up the majority of the middle class and voting bloc.  

I think that people of all political stripes would agree that Fox is at the very least conservative leaning and has a history of not-so high journalistic standards.  The problem this presents for the middle class is that, based on the ratings, 5 times as many people are getting their news from Fox News and their conservative opinion shows.  Sure, there are a lot of the hardcore conservatives that make up that audience, but by the numbers the apathetic majority is much more likely to get their news from Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, or Sean Hannity.  This presents a problem because these folks have shown time and time again that they have no problem bending, stretching, or flat out disregarding the truth when it comes to reporting (See Death Panels, Birth Certificates, et al).  

Republicans may argue that the MSM does the same thing for the left and that their audience is much larger than Fox.  MSNBC would fit that criteria, but their audience isn’t even a 1/3 of Fox News. The big 3 may have left leaning anchors, but their stories are generally centrist/right according to most media watch groups.  

Democrats need to combat this stranglehold that Fox News has on the news media or risk losing the middle class on issues that are core to their success (ARRA, Health Reform, Middle Class Tax cuts, Alternative Energy).  If you only listen to 10 minutes of news/politics a day and you hear that Obamacare is going to create death panels, raise your taxes, and take you away from your doctor it is no wonder why you would have a negative opinion about what Democrats are trying to do.  

Democrats can keep coming up with great ideas to help the struggling middle class, but until they develop a way to counter the right wing media reach into the middle class, they will never succeed in the court of public opinion.

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